


Self-Appointed

by ardellian



Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Original Character Death(s), character exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:27:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26950645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardellian/pseuds/ardellian
Summary: Taking a first step towards becoming Sidestep.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 24





	Self-Appointed

**Author's Note:**

> Playing around with backstory and motivation a little.

Molly is itchy. 

She is rearranging her things—picking stuff out of one bag and putting it into another, trying to get some control over something, somehow, some way. She keeps being itchy, though. She’s out of money, so she can’t get her hits—so she itches. 

You scratch your arm.

You like Molly. She leaves you alone. And the others leave Molly alone—she’s got a switchblade she’s not afraid of using, and she mutters to herself, and she smells. When you collapsed here, that first night, she used that switchblade on someone who was trying to rough you up. They wanted your fancy coat—she wanted them to get out of her space. You gave her the coat, and the watch and the wallet that you had already emptied, and it bought you a truce. She pretended you weren’t there, and you got to bleed in peace. 

You’re doing better now.

You’ve got rid of all the fancy clothes and learned how to move and stand so that no one thinks you’re trying to be something you’re not. You thought you knew how to do that, but here, squatting in the abandoned ruins of Los Diablos, the rules are different. 

Don’t smile, for example—it’s not disarming; it shows off your well kept teeth and marks you as a target. 

Don’t act like you belong, or like you’re right where you’re supposed to be—no one is here because they’re supposed to be. Act small; look away; look scared. 

The rules are very different here, and your handlers never bothered teaching you them—because why would they care about these people, or how they think? They didn’t. They don’t. These people don’t matter. 

But Molly matters to you. You _like_ her. She shared dinner with you, once. Looked at you and said—”Stupid kid. Have you got brain damage, eh?” And she thought of her brother. You don’t look like her brother, and her brother is long dead, but she looked at you and thought of a time before this city was full of ruins and she didn’t have to carry a switchblade, and then she shared her dinner. 

She doesn’t think about her brother much. Her thoughts go funny when he crosses her mind, and then she gets really itchy. 

At first you followed her around—but that made her itchy around _you_ , so you stopped. Instead you follow other people. You listen to them, and you try to understand. The rules. Because the rules you were taught don’t work. It’s not the same, pretending to be a person for a few hours, and pretending to be a person _all the time_. Everything is so complicated. Everything is so much _._ People think so much. You know it can’t all be important, but how do you know which piece really matters? 

People don’t make sense. 

Molly is leaving, now. The itching is too bad for her to stay in one place. 

Money—she’s upset because she’s out of money. You bite your lip. Can you get her some money? You’ve been picking pockets—you’re good at it. It makes sense to you. Follow someone until they’re distracted; bump into a well dressed man; pick up a woman’s purse when she’s looking away. It’s not so different from what you used to do, and the stakes are much lower. 

So today you take a little extra—keep more than you normally do. You buy an extra sweet bun with your coffee at the minimart, and as you sit on a park bench in the sun you feel that the world makes a bit more sense. 

But then Molly doesn’t come back to her tent. You stay awake all night, trying to feel her. She doesn’t come. 

Not the next night either. 

The money that you don’t need burns in your pocket, and you go looking for her. Because you were following her, for a while, you know where she usually goes—the parks, the abandoned buildings, the street corners. Nothing. It burns in you like acid, like you’ve done something wrong, made some terrible mistake. You don’t understand why. There’s no one here to punish you. Nothing is going to happen to you. 

At sunset, you lurch back to your hideout with a feeling like you need to throw up. 

You can sense the danger before you hear it. All of the regulars are terrified, because—because someone is there who is not supposed to be—because—

Suddenly you hear someone screaming, and you can pick out Molly’s thoughts from the buzz of panic, and _someone is hurting her._

You run. 

In the parking lot outside the building you’re squatting in is a small crowd. In the middle: a large figure, larger than a normal person. Boost, you assume; in the dull streetlight you can see the ragged edges of their arms and it looks like scales. They’re kicking someone. They’re kicking _Molly._

Suddenly you feel flushed. Like the temperature just went up by twenty degrees. The boost laughs—they’re having fun. They are enjoying this—kicking the life out of someone to send a message. No one steals from their boss.

You don’t have a switchblade, but unlike the other squatters who are watching in terrified fascination and trying to stay as small and unnoticed as possible, you’re not afraid of someone with a few inhuman features. 

Fear is not what you’re feeling at all. 

You’re not a fighter, but neither is the person occupied with kicking an old homeless woman. They’re just strong, and they seem to have some sort of natural protection—looks like scales—but you’ve seen more variants of brutal violence enacted than they could even imagine. You just need the right tool...

You know there’s a lot of scrap material around the lot, and it takes you less than a second to find what you’re looking for—a piece of rebar long enough to give you a proper swing and straight enough to control. Someone notices you, you register faintly—you don’t care, because it’s not the scale-person. 

You grip the rebar tight, circle around so that you’re coming in from the back—oh god what is he doing, someone thinks—and then you swing as hard as you can against the scale-person’s knee. 

The impact doesn’t really make a noise, just a dull _‘thuck’_.

An instant later they scream in agony and collapse on the ground, as you stagger backwards, thrown off balance—they were squisher than you thought. No armor underneath those pants, no metal reinforcing their bone. Just a big strong human with some scales. That probably helps against switchblades—not so much against iron.

You tighten your grip on the rebar and get ready for another swing. The scale-person has managed to spin on the ground, the adrenaline rush enough to override the worst of their pain, and a narrow, heavily lined face with a reddish beard is snarling at you. 

You could probably crush his skull. 

But he’s terrified.

Your muscles freeze, holding the piece of iron over your head. You don’t have to crush his skull. 

“Run,” you say. You growl. You don’t recognize your own voice—it’s been too long since you used it for anything other than mumbling _‘thank you’_ at store clerks. 

The man’s gaze flickers over you, making the calculation—you’re small, but you look bigger from his angle and the expression on your face is freaking him out and the pain from his knee is really coming through now.

He scrambles to his feet and limps away—you glare at him, trying to keep the expression that scared him fixed. It’s not one you chose; it just happened. Once he’s out of sight, you drop your eyes to Molly. 

She’s bleeding. He kicked her in the head. He crushed her fingers—that’s what hurts her the most right now—her hand. You realize that’s not what you should be concerned with, though. The danger is that he kicked her _head_ , several times, and her thoughts are going fuzzy. 

The fever that’s been eating you up suddenly shifts to clammy nausea. You’ve felt this before. Felt someone’s thoughts as their brain fills up with blood and _no._

Desperately, you spin around, looking for—you don’t know what. None of the others are going to help. They’re sneaking away now; the violence is done. They’re not going to risk themselves by getting involved. She fucked up, trying to steal from—

You don’t care who she stole from. You need—

You need a _doctor_. An ambulance, a medic team—

The nausea crawls up your throat, and Molly groans on the ground. There’s no team. There’s just you and an old homeless woman with intracranial bleeding and you can’t help her. _You can’t help her._

The rebar falls to the ground with a loud clang—it sounds as if it came from a million miles away, as you stumble to the ground, to your knees. You stare at Molly, at her twitching arm, and you feel her thoughts go foggy. She doesn’t have long. 

You touch her hand—it comes through clearer. She’s scared, she’s so scared, and you—

You know her brother used to hold her hand; you hold her hand. Her brother, her older brother, dead for thirty years now, he used to hold her hand and shush her when she cried—

“Hey,” you whisper. “Hey, hey, it’s all right. It’s all right.” 

You don’t know if it helps. How can you know? Her panic fades—but maybe her brain just can’t feel panic anymore. She squeezes your hand, and then there are no more thoughts. A fuzzy feeling in your head, for a little bit longer, and then not even that. 

Just a dead homeless woman. 

No one is going to care. She doesn’t matter—none of this matters. You don’t matter anymore, just like the rest of these people. They’re just feeling lucky it’s not them. They’ve all seen too many wasted lives to be able to care—and Molly brought this on herself. Someone’s thinking about taking her things—maybe she had something valuable squirreled away. 

With a desperate urgency you start rifling through her pockets—until you find the switchblade, and a little relieved sigh escapes you. The idea of someone else taking that is unacceptable, for some reason. It was hers. 

She can’t use it anymore.

So it’s yours now, you guess. 

You let go of her hand, and get to your feet, swaying a little. What do you do with the body? There’s no one here to recycle it. What are you supposed to do when someone dies—call an ambulance? You don’t have a phone.

All the other people have disappeared, except a lone man. You know him; his name is Elijah. He’s one of the more sociable ones—tried to talk to you once. You tuck the switchblade away and look up towards him. He squints back.

“You okay, kid?” he asks with a voice raspy from too many years on the streets. You don’t know what to reply. 

“I don’t have a phone,” you say, ignoring his question. You step over her body. Elijah crosses his arms over his chest when you approach—vary. He just saw you wreck a man twice your size, and he really didn’t expect that from you. He thought you were a bit broken in the head, trailing after an old smelly woman like a lost dog. “Someone should call an ambulance.” 

Elijah looks from you to Molly. “She’s dead, kid,” he mumbles. “Sorry.”

“I know,” you answer. “An ambulance can take care of her body,” you clarify, and you try to sound friendly. Not too friendly—not small talk at a party friendly. Just unthreatening-friendly. 

You don’t quite hit the mark. Elijah squints at you; your accent is wrong. You sound like you came straight from the east coast, he thinks—shit. 

“Look, kiddo,” he says. “I don’t know what’s your deal, but if I were you, I’d be running towards the other side of the town. They’ll be coming after you next.” 

“Who?” you ask, because Elijah’s thoughts are jumping too quickly between things you know nothing about. “The scale man?” 

Elijah just shakes his head. “ _Scale man_ calls himself Grayhide and is working for the Red Razor. The crazy lady tried to _steal_ from her.” He throws a glance at the body. “Maybe this is what she wanted.”

“Her name was Molly,” you say. 

“Well, I don’t care,” Elijah snorts. “I’m getting out of here—as should you. Red’s people are going to come looking for you, and if they don’t get you, our dear neighbours might. You just got them evicted.”

You look at the building you’ve been living in for months, and you realize Elijah’s right. The people that have been living here are packing up—they’re afraid. They know that if Red’s people can’t find _you,_ they’ll take it out on someone else, and that person will end up like Molly. 

You swallow. “Sorry,” you whisper. 

Elijah laughs, but he doesn’t think it’s funny. He doesn’t care much anymore, but it was a long time since he saw something like what you just did. What did you just do? Protect someone, risking yourself to do it?

Is that what you did?

You stare stupidly at him when he clasps your shoulder. “Good luck, kid,” he says, and then walks away. He gave you a warning; that’s all he cares enough to do. Not that he thinks it’s going to make a difference—he still thinks there’s something wrong with your head. 

Then you’re alone.

You finger the switchblade in your pocket. You look at the dead body in the middle of the parking lot. The piece of rebar that you dropped. 

You leave, head buzzing. 

You walk and you walk, until the sun comes up. You’re in a nicer neighbourhood now—people are staring at you but you don’t mind too much. You’re trying to think.

You don’t understand this place. You don’t understand how it works. You liked Molly and you couldn’t help her. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t do anything wrong. Everybody steals. Everybody tried to steal from _her_ , all the time. Why should it get you killed if you steal from the wrong people? It makes you...

Angry. 

You stop in a park you haven’t been to before. You look at the people passing by. You’re _angry_. You’re angry at that man—Grayhide. You’re angry at yourself. You’re angry at the other squatters, for not doing anything. And you’re angry at Red Razor, who you don’t even know.

You finger the switchblade in your pocket. You remember the feeling of the impact of iron against the man’s leg. If you’d been there a bit earlier, you could have stopped him. You could have saved her. 

You could have done something.

You tighten your grip on the switchblade. Maybe you still can. 

* * *

A week later, and now you know who Red Razor is. She runs a small drug ring, and has a few enhanced enforcers—Grayhide is one of them. It’s a shoddy operation, as far as you can tell. A real bottom of the ladder thing. You know that the drug business is lucrative, for the people at the top. You’ve been close to some of them. You’ve seen how they think—profit margins and bribes and complicated nets of loyalty and mutual favors. 

Red Razor doesn’t think like that. She thinks that since she can hurt people, they ought to listen to her. She hurt Grayhide when he came back with a broken knee; sliced up his face. He’s terrified of her. Like Elijah was. 

It’s strange, since she’s not actually that dangerous. As far as you can tell, she’s got minor telekinesis abilities which have a very limited efficacy but a reasonable range. One of the things she can do is to move small sharp objects very quickly—like razors. Greyskin saw her slice a man’s throat open from across the room once, and it terrified him enough that he doesn’t really see that just wearing reasonably coarse fabric from top to toe would make her harmless. He wouldn’t even need that, since half of him is covered in scales. 

But it’s something you’re coming to terms with, after a few months exposed to the reality of this world. Humans are terrified of almost everything. Most of them have no idea of what is actually dangerous, or how to assess a threatening situation. They get scared; they panic; they do stupid things. 

Red Razor also has a mod on her crew, a woman who can pick up radio signals. Helps them avoid the police. That woman doesn’t seem afraid of her boss, though; she knows she’s valuable, and can find other employment if needed. 

That’s the woman you’re trailing right now. 

Since Molly died, you’ve made changes. You realized that if you want to figure out who these people are, looking like a bum wasn’t going to work out for you anymore. You need to move around regular people, so you need to shower and dress in clean clothes. It didn’t take long to find an empty rental with a balcony you could climb onto, and that’s where you’re living now. The floor in the kitchen is broken and waterlogged, and it’s not occupied because the landlord is putting off fixing it—but you don’t need a kitchen. The shower works; that’s enough. So you nicked a bunch of nondescript clothes, cut your hair into something that looks more like a real haircut, and now you blend in better with the crowds. 

The woman you’re following certainly doesn’t notice you—she’s arguing with her husband over the phone. Something about their kid being in trouble at school. You’re not really expecting her to have anything interesting to offer you, but you’re unsure about what you’re supposed to do now.

You know you could slip in and take Red Razor out. You know where she lives. You know she doesn’t have any kind of real security. It would be easy to pretend to be delivering something, and put the switchblade you’re carrying into her neck; cut the jugular. She’d be dead in seconds, and you could disappear in minutes. It’s what you know how to do.

That’s not the problem. The problem is that the thought of feeling another person die is enough to make you stop walking, enough to make you lean against the wall of the closest building and you need to focus on just breathing for a moment. 

You don’t want to think about more people dying. Not even if they hurt someone you liked. Not even if they _killed_ someone you liked. You never want to feel that again. 

You run a hand over your face, and when you look around again Red Razor’s henchman is gone. You sigh. Well, you didn’t expect anything useful from her anyway.

What do you do now? 

In the end, you slip into the coffee shop on the next block. Getting a coffee is something that is seemingly always acceptable. You can sit for a few hours in a coffee shop and not do anything in particular, if you just order something to drink, and you like that. A few moments where you don’t have to worry so much about slipping up. 

You place yourself in the corner, to have a good look out over the other customers, and you sip on your coffee. Like this, you can easily pretend to be normal. You look just like anyone else, taking a break from a busy schedule. No one can tell you were just tailing a criminal, or thinking about killing. 

They’ve got a screen over the counter, and it’s playing some kind of documentary about animals. For a few minutes you listen to a calming voice explain the life of zebras—until there’s a news break. Aerial footage from what looks like a highway. A few crashed cars; a pile up behind that. One car has been overturned, and on the empty road are people. Fighting. 

Your mouth goes dry. A hulking giant that hardly looks human is swatting at someone dressed in blue, who keeps zipping back and forth—a flier. Another person is coming at them from the back, and whenever they land a hit, the monster screams. A third person is off to the side, and keeps flickering with bright light—it’s hard to tell what they’re doing from the footage. 

The tagline reads “ _Rangers engaged on highway 55”._

The Rangers. Of course you know the Rangers—the big monster tries to throw a car at the flyer—that’s Sentinel. Your eyes dart to the bottom of the screen—is this live footage? Yes. The flickering figure must be Sunstream, and the last fighter; Charge. 

They’re fighting funny, you think—they’re so careful. If they pressed their advantage a bit more, the fight would already be over. Maybe the giant has some power which isn’t obvious through the feed? For some reason they keep drawing it out—

The footage cuts out, and you almost groan in frustration. Instead of the fight there’s a man talking about _traffic_ , and you really don’t care about that. Instead you slump back and take a sip of the coffee, which is starting to grow cold.

Your heart is racing. The Rangers—they _are_ dangerous. You wonder if they might be sent after you, if the Farm figures out where you are—but no. You’re not a hulking monster blocking a highway. You’re not dangerous. Just useful—and expensive. 

The coffee gets stuck in your throat.

They don’t know you’re here, you remind yourself. You just need to stay out of trouble. Stay with the people that don’t matter. Disappear. Millions of people live in Los Diablos, and you’re far from the only one with no background, or a shady past. This is where people come for fresh starts. Right?

You think about Molly, and the fact that she lived here her whole life—that she still thought of her hometown as ‘LA’. 

Until a new voice from the TV makes you look up again. There’s a another face on the screen now, and this isn’t filmed in a studio but with what seems like a shaky handheld camera. _Marshal Charge of the LD Rangers,_ reads the tagline. Young, handsome, warm brown skin and a wide grin on his sweaty face. He runs a hand through his hair, pushing it out of his forehead. 

_“Got a bit hairy there for a second, yeah,”_ he laughs. _“But nothing to worry about—Sentinel is just fine. Takes more than something like that,”_ he looks over his shoulder at something the camera can’t see, _“to give us serious trouble. We’ll have this mess cleared up within the hour.”_

 _“It’s rare that the Rangers manage to show up so quickly,”_ the reporter says, and the Marshal’s smile grows a bit. 

_“Sometimes we’re lucky—we were already close by, on other business. But protecting the public from these things is our first priority, always. We’re very happy we could stop this before someone got seriously hurt.”_ You look at the smiling man on the screen, chewing at your lip. The footage cuts to aerial again, showing police and ambulance pulling up on the scene. 

The Ranger initiative is meant to deal with superpowered crime. Villains—boosted or modded criminals posing significant threats to public safety. They don’t care about small things like Red Razor and Grayhide, though.

You squint at the police cars on the screen. You can set her up. Red Razor. Can’t you? You figured out the LDPD leave her alone because she’s supposedly too small to seriously investigate, but if you can deliver her organisation to them... 

Yeah. You could do that. 

* * *

Perched top of the precinct roof, you stare into the distance. Your heart is beating fast. Your palms are sweating. You’re flushed, feverish—

You’re _angry_. 

You’re angry because the Precinct Chief is having a phone call and he’s lying—he’s lying about everything you gave him—all the work you did—because he can’t be _bothered._ Because—

Because it’s just a small drug ring, and they’re _harmless_ —they’re smart enough to _stay away from the people that matter._ Selling drugs to and beating up squatters isn’t even illegal—the _squatters_ are illegal. 

Oh, you’re angry. 

You misread the rules again. You misunderstood. This was a waste of time. 

You tighten your hands into fists, again, and again, and again. What are you supposed to do? You got the evidence—more evidence than they would need. It wasn’t difficult. You don’t know what you expected to happen—but surely _something_ was supposed to happen. Isn’t that how things work? You get the information, and they _do something._

You look at your hands. 

Not that you ever knew what _they_ did with all the information you gathered. But they must have done something _._ That’s the point of information, isn’t it? To guide action? You even went to the public library, you figured out what you would need for them to press charges, and they just... don’t care. 

You care. 

You _care—_ you cared about Molly—she was your friend—you care that she’s dead—you don’t want her to be dead—you thought you could help her. You’re here now, you’re _free_ , and you’re going to _do something._

It takes you barely a day to cobble together an outfit that won’t be vulnerable to razorblades—leather jacket, thick biker pants, biker helmet. Maybe you can’t get them locked up, like the Rangers could. But you can destroy the operation that killed your friend. Your _friend._ She took care of you. 

And they killed her. 

So when they’re meeting their supplier the next day, the police aren’t there to arrest them—but you’re there. You’re the one who cuts the power, throws a punch in the brief darkness that the Red Razor’s hired thugs think comes from one of the supplier’s men and it starts a fight—you’re the one who steals the cash they brought—you’re the one angry enough to plant a fist in Red Razor’s face even after the flashlights come on, and you hold your thumb wrong so it hurts like hell but you don’t care. The pain doesn’t matter. 

Maybe you can’t get her locked up, but she’s got debts, and if you mess up this deal she won’t be able to pay them. 

Then something happens that you didn’t expect, something that makes you flee the scene. The police arrive—someone called them—along with some local hero. Mercury, she calls herself. They arrest the whole meeting. You watch from a roof across the street, clutching your sprained thumb to your chest. Red keeps crying out for you to reveal yourself—fucking bastard, she calls you. You remain crouched in the shadows, watching the commotion; the small crowd, the snapping of cameras. 

The next morning, the local newspaper runs a story about the brutal drug gangs in the area, and the unknown vigilante that disrupted a major deal, leading to the arrest of a few local players. You eat your sweet buns and drink your coffee in the park, reading the article over and over again. 

You’re not sure how it happened. The rules don’t make sense. Maybe there are no rules, anymore. 

You use most of the money you stole to buy a phone, and an expensive laptop. It doesn’t take you long to find more speculation online. The police insist it was just a deal gone bad—but one reporter got an unknown source, from inside the precinct, claiming the police got tipped off beforehand. The reporter is obviously excited about the idea of a new vigilante popping up—and so are you. 

Looking up the exact meaning of _vigilante_ , you find:

> **_:_ ** _a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate)_
> 
> **_:_ ** _a self-appointed doer of justice_

Self-appointed. 

You like that.

You like that a lot. 


End file.
